The present invention concerns a sputtering device with magnetic amplification by means of a permanent magnet system that is located on the side of a target that faces away from the sputtering surface of the target and that generates a magnetic field, whose lines of force run above and penetrate the sputtering surface; with a cathode that is formed at least in part by the sputtering surface; and by an anode that is located at a distance from the cathode for the generation of an electric field, whereby the permanent magnets are connected via a yoke made of soft iron.
A sputtering device is known of the general type in question (German DE 29 20 780 C2) in which measures have been taken to establish a flat profile for the magnetic field lines over the sputtering surface; therefore, the permanent magnet system is formed by a combination of a number of individual magnetic elements whose orientation relative to each other has been chosen so that the lines of force of the magnetic field run parallel to the sputtering surface of the target both inside the magnet system and across a large part of the sputtering surface.
In a particular embodiment of this known sputtering device, the magnetic elements of a first group feature a pole orientation that is set at an angle to the sputtering surface of the target and the magnetic elements of a second group feature a pole orientation that runs parallel to the sputtering surface.
Also known is a sputtering cathode (U.S. 4,461,688) with a plate-shaped target and several U-shaped magnetic units that are positioned on the side of the target facing away from the substrate while the front surfaces of the two arms of a first U-shaped magnetic unit lie against the peripheral areas of the surface of the target and the front surfaces of the arms of another pair of U-shaped magnetic units each lie against one half of the target surface and the front surfaces of both of the arms of another two pairs of smaller U-shaped magnetic units each lie against the outside half of the surface of the target that overlaps the second pair of magnetic units.
Finally, a sputtering cathode based on the magnetron principle has already been proposed (German DE 198 19 785.3) with a target that consists of at least one part of the material to be sputtered and a magnet system that is located behind the target and has sources of different polarity by means of which at least one tunnel of closed loop field lines is formed, whereby the source poles that are oriented away from the target are connected with each other by a magnetic yoke made of soft magnetic material and whereby the bodies that form the sources of the magnetic fields are prisms, preferably cuboids, whose base lines are set parallel to the target plane and the field lines of the sources all run at an angle to the bases of the bodies.
An object of the present invention is a sputtering cathode that has a target with a particularly long life or with a high degree of use of the used target material, that has magnets that are not immersed in cooling fluid and that is suited for a coating process with a high separation rate.